The impact of the sluggishness of the Indian economy is being seen in the country’s largest biscuit maker Parle. Because of this, in the coming days, 10 thousand employees of Parle are facing a crisis of jobs.

According to the Economic Times report, Parle can lay off 10,000 people due to sluggish use of its products. According to Mayank Shah, the category head of the company, this sluggishness is due to Goods and Services Tax (GST). Mayank Shah said, “We are constantly demanding from the government to reduce GST on biscuits. If the government does not listen to us or does not tell us any alternative, then we may have to be forced to lay off 8 to 10 thousand people. ”

How GST is responsible

Mayank Shah said that we have demanded the government to reduce GST on biscuits priced at Rs 100 per kg or less. In fact, before the implementation of GST, a biscuit priced below Rs 100 per kg was taxed at 12 per cent. But when the government implemented GST two years ago, all the biscuits were put in the slab of 18 per cent. The effect of this was that the biscuit companies had to increase their prices and due to this the sales have come down.

According to Mayank Shah, Parle has increased the price on biscuits by 5 percent. Due to this there has been a big drop in sales. Shah explained the reason for the decline in sales and said that customers are very emotional about the prices. They see how many biscuits they are getting. Customers are alerted after understanding this difference. Please tell here that 90-year-old biscuit company Parle has 10 plants of its own and 125 contracts. There are 1 lakh employees attached to them. The annual revenue of the company is around Rs 9,940 crore.

Situations are not right

Recently, Varun Berry, managing director of Parle’s main rival Britannia Industries, also mentioned the decline in sales. He said that customers are also hesitant to buy 5 rupees biscuit packets. Berry had said, ‘Our growth has been only 6 percent. Market growth is also sluggish than us. Earlier, the market research firm Nielsen had said that the consumer goods industry has cooled down due to the economic slowdown as consumption in rural areas has come down. According to Nielsen’s report, salt, biscuits, spices, soaps and packaged tea have seen the most lethargy.